Last week I reported that the Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R – CA) House Oversight Committee was preparing contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Eric Holder for non-cooperation and defying subpoenas in the committee’s investigation into Operation Fast and Furious. Also known as “Gunwalker,” the administration’s supposed plan was to funnel guns and grenades to the cartels and then, somehow (1), trace them to their leaders. This plan went horribly awry, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 Mexican civilians, police, federal agents, and military, as well and one, perhaps two United States federal officers. It is this failed, fatal, operation that Chairman Issa’s committee has been digging into in order to find out how something this boneheaded could take place, all with little help from the Justice Department of the “most transparent administration, ever.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings warned Rep. Darrell Issa against turning a potential contempt resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal into “an election-year witch hunt,” he wrote in a letter late last week.

“Holding someone in contempt of Congress is one of the most serious and formal actions our Committee can take, and it should not be used as a political tool to generate press as part of an election-year witch hunt against the Obama Administration,” the Maryland Democrat wrote Friday to Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Congressman Cummings was incensed that the draft citation was leaked to the press:

“Leaking a draft contempt citation that Members of our Committee have never seen suggests that you are more interested in perpetuating your partisan political feud in the press than in obtaining any specific substantive information relating to the Committee’s investigation,” he wrote. “These actions undermine the credibility of the Committee, as well as the integrity and validity of any contempt actions the Committee ultimately may choose to adopt in the future.”

Cry me a river. A congressman complaining about leaks to the press is about as credible as Captain Renault being shocked to find gambling in Rick’s cafe.

No, what’s really going on here is a hack congressman trying to spin a message about unfair Republicans (2), in order to protect a cabinet officer and his president. The truth of what may have happened in Operation fast and Furious, including possible massive violations of federal and state laws, matters less than Obama’s electoral chances.

We’ve seen this show before: it was called “Watergate.” Only no one died that time.

Footnotes:
(1) I say “somehow,” since, without any tracking devices or, indeed, any effort at all to trace the guns once they were in Mexico, it remains a mystery as to just how the DoJ, ATF, and other involved agencies ever expected to link these weapons to their buyers. The only way to ever see them again was to recover them at crime scenes, which usually meant people had been killed, too.
(2) I’m sure we won’t have to wait long before accusations of “racism” are made, too.